I would like to find out what branch of Hakka my maternal grandparents belong to. My aunt (mother's brother's wife) is called "kh'iu meh" 舅母, rather than the more common "kh'im" 妗. The peculiarity lies in the "meh" (for mother) - I am not sure if it is 母 or 媽. I asked my mum (who is non-Chinese educated) and she says her father is 福建客家 and her mother is "yoon th'in 客家" (don't know the Hanzi for it).

Thanks for the information, Dylan. It is interesting to note that the pronunciation for 永定 in my mother's native Hakka dialect is "yun t'in", suggesting that the final -g's have been dropped in many of their -ng ending words.

I looked up the demographics of the Hakka community in your website (www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hakga/haktifong.htm - saw your name at the bottom, so I presume it was you). 永定 comes under Fujian, so I would have imagined that the dialect would have been influenced, at least to some extent, by the Min dialect. However, my 25-30 years of on-and-off exposure to the dialect has revealed almost no Min influence, and the vocabulary and grammatical structures appear to be almost 100% congruent with Yue. However, if "maeh" is the pronunciation for 母, then it could point to Min influence, since the word for "mother" in most Min dialects is "ah bu" 阿母.

In fact, the only Hakka sub-dialect I have ever heard in Malaysia that reveals clues of Min influence is on Penang island (which is not where I come from, just to clear the confusion), where the Minnan dialect forms the majority. There, the word 客 is pronouced "k'ak" (most h- beginnings in Yue are replaced by k- beginnings in Min), as compared to "hak" in standard Moi Yen, and the word used for "correct" is "ch'ok" 著 (compare "tiok" - the Min pronunciation of the same word), rather than "ngaam" (as used in Yue). Not sure which likely sub-dialect of Hakka that is, though.

Another peculiarity about the 福建/永定 客家 is that -ui endings in standard Meixian end simply with -i (i.e. the u is dropped) in YongDing. Examples include 味 ('mui' in Meixian, 'mi' in YongDing), 肥 ('fui' in Meixian, 'fi' in YongDing, 尾 ('mui' in Meixian, 'mi' in YongDing). In all cases, the differences lie only in the pronunciations; the tones are the same.

This phenomenon seems to parallel some phonetic patterns in the Minnan dialect, e.g. 尾 is "be" in Xiamen and "bue" in Zhangzhou.

mark,
There are many hakka sects in fujian province.7 of them in the west and at least 3 separate sects are in chiangchiu area as southern chiangchiu hakka.That chiangchiu hakkan have more minnan influence than those in the west.
People like 陳水扁(詔安客家)﹐呂秀蓮(南靖客家)are chiangchiu hakka.In fact the people from southern chiangchiu who moved to taiwan are hakka but not minnan.Chiangchiu minnan in Taiwan are mostly from the North namely longhai,longxi.
As for the explanation of 永定 hakka and others ,the best is to buy a new book on all hakka sects in china-客家話通用詞典﹐2004 羅美珍﹐中山大學。